The Common Cold
by AnimeVikki32
Summary: House isn't too thrilled with his latest patient, he just isn't interesting. He has...the common cold. Right? RIGHT? If it's just the common cold, then if House himself catches it, then it's no big deal,...right? NO YAOI
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, so this is the first House MD story I've ever tried to write. ****I'm not sure where this is going yet, but I'm gonna make it as awesome as physically/emotionally/mentally/whatever possible**. **So hang on tight because here we go! :)**

**Btw, this takes place before House fires Chase, Cameron, and Foreman.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own House MD. I am just a fan who enjoys it enough to write about it.  
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**The Common Cold  
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**Chapter One**

"Good morning, sunshine." the doctor greeted in a voice that was obviously unbelievably sarcastic as he limped into the elevator with another doctor. He had his black flaming cane in his right hand, a red file in his left. The second doctor looked at him and sighed.

"Good morning, House. So how mad at Cuddy are you today and how boring is the case?"

"Wilson, I'm hurt. You would suspect that _I_ would be angry?" The elevator stopped and as the door opened Dr. Gregory House and Dr. James Wilson stepped out into the hallway of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

"Of course I would suspect that you would be angry. You're a bitter and sarcastic drug addicted alcoholic who hates who he is and the people he's forced to be around."

"Then why am I still here?" House asked as he and his best friend came to the door to House's office.

"Because not only are you addicted to Vicodin, you're also addicted to solving medical puzzles. And Cuddy can't fire you because you're the best doctor in the entire hospital."

House stopped, opened the door to his office, and turned his head to look at Wilson.

"Thank-you, Wilson. That's just what every best friend loves to hear." He opened the door all the way and limped inside, leaving Wilson outside the door in the hallway.

House limped to the table in the differential diagnosis room and threw the file on the table. Chase, Cameron, and Foreman looked up at him as he limped around the table, encircling them, looking down on them as he normally did.

"Today we have a twenty-six-year-old male suffering from a sore throat. If you ask me, It's a cold, but Cuddy threatened to fire me if I don't take the case, so-"

"Wait, wait." Foreman interrupted "Since when do you care when Cuddy threatens to fire you?"

"Since we started having mad sex every night. I'm frightened that our new-found relationship will alter our professional one." The eyebrows raised and the jaws dropped on every face of House's team. There was an uncomfortable silence that hung in the air for a good thirty seconds before Cameron spoke up.

"H-House...s-seriously? You and Cuddy are sleeping together?"

House gave her a look that screamed 'are you really that much of a bumbling idiot?'.

"Of course not!" he said. It wasn't a shout, yet his voice wasn't it's normal volume either.

"Shouldn't we be discussing the patient? I mean, no matter why House took the case the guy's obviously dying or Cuddy wouldn't have persuaded him to take it." Chase told them, trying to be the voice of reason "Therefore it can't be a cold."

"Go run a routine battery of tests. Infection, toxins, everything. Rule out the obvious. Who wants to bet it's a cold?" House ordered and Cameron, Chase, and Foreman stood up and exited the room. Just as Chase, the first one to reach the door, began to open it, House stopped them.

"Wait. Get a history, someone. Take into consideration all his environmental factors and genetics."

"A history?" Foreman asked.

"Yes, a history! It's what you get when you talk to a patient about his or her life in order to learn the possible causes of his or her disease! I thought they covered that in med school."

"I know what a history is, House." Foreman countered, sounding irritated "I'm just saying that if it were a cold there would be no reason for a history because the common cold isn't deadly and has so many ways to infect people. So the fact that you're telling us to get one means that you're not confident that the patient only has a cold. What's going on, House?"

"What are you waiting for?" House asked, completely ignoring what Foreman had just said "Our patient could be dying of the common cold! How cruel are you people to let him suffer so?" His sarcasm was practically exploding from every syllable of his words.

"Whatever, House." Foreman sighed and the three doctors left their boss's office.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"What are you doing in my office, House?" Wilson asked as the oncologist opened the door and walked into his office to find House reclining on the couch. He walked over and sat behind the desk.

"Isn't it obvious, Wilson? I need somewhere to think."

"So you choose my office? I shouldn't be surprised."

"No you shouldn't." House affirmed "By the way, what looks like a cold, but isn't?" He looked at Wilson as if he were expecting an answer, but got up and hobbled out of his friend's office before Wilson could so much as open his mouth.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Patient's glands in the neck are swollen. He also has a fever." Cameron said. The four of them, House, Cameron, Chase, and Foreman, were once more in the differential diagnosis room, pondering the results of the tests.

"Also, the tests came back positive for an infection." Foreman explained "It...looks like a cold."

House, without hesitating, said:

"Alright. We've wasted our time, he has a cold. Give him some Tylenol and send the faker home. He's wasting our, mostly my, time." The team was about to leave to do what their boss had told them, when Cuddy burst into the room looking frantic. Everyone turned to look at her.

"House, get in your patient's room right now." She sounded deadly serious. House looked at her with the same look he always gave her when he challenged her orders.

"Why? We've just concluded that the patient has a cold." House really loved his sarcasm "Where are the congratulations? The brilliant Dr. Gregory House has just come up with another brilliant diagnosis! -his voice went down to the seriousness of Cuddy's- _He has a COLD_!"

"House, your patient with the supposed cold just went into respiratory arrest!"

**Hope that was good enough for you guys :) Don't forget to review and leave me your opinions :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**I know there haven't been any reviews yet, but I'm anxious to get the next chapter up because I have to go to school tomorrow and once it gets into the school week I'm not going to have any time at all until the weekend starts up again. Plus, my brain's been itching to get something written. Something exciting! :D  
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**The Common Cold  
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**Chapter Two**

House gave Cuddy a completely dumbfounded look. So did the rest of House's team.

"What do you say to that, House?" Cuddy asked.

"What do I say?" House chose his words semi-carefully "I say this case just got interesting." He looked around at Cuddy and his team.

"Come on. You're not going to let him die, are you? That would just be mean, right? And besides, if he dies then I don't get to figure out what's wrong with him." They left the differential diagnosis room and hurried to the room of their patient.

XxXxXxXxXxXx

Since it had been determined that the patient had in infection, it had also been determined that it was most likely contagious, so he was moved to a clean room. When Cuddy, Cameron, Foreman, Chase, and House reached the room they all put on their scrubs and entered in panic. Cameron, Chase, and Foreman had the surgical breathing tube, scalpel, and other necessary medical instruments to get the patient breathing again. Cameron made an incision in his neck, while Chase forced tubes and such down through the hole. The monitors were going off alerting everyone to the fact that something was wrong. After everyone got the surgical breathing tube in place and working, it only took a few minutes for the patient to start breathing on his own once more.

Cameron removed the equipment from the patient's throat after she was sure he was breathing on his own. He remained unconscious for a while longer, while everyone else relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief.

"This is interesting." House mumbled under his breath "The common cold does not cause respiratory arrest."

"Of course it doesn't!" Cuddy gasped, still high on adrenaline from the episode from about two minutes ago "Does this mean that you'll find out what's wrong with him?"

"Of course." House answered as if it were the most obvious answer he could have given "It's peaked my interest. I need to find out what's wrong with him. Let's go back to my office, shall we?"

XxXxXxXxXxXx

A few minutes later they were all in House's differential diagnosis room connected to his office. Cuddy had gone back to her own office, now that the medical crisis at hand had ended. Cameron, Chase, and Foreman were now sitting around the table as House was standing in front of the white board, his cane hooked on the edge. In black erasable marker House had written 'sore throat', 'fever', 'swollen glands', and 'respiratory arrest'.

"Okay, people, what causes sore throat, fever, swollen glands, and respiratory arrest?"

"Mononucleosis?" Chase asked "It explains the sore throat, fever..."

"Wrong. Mononucleosis wouldn't send him into respiratory arrest. Try again."

"What about Epiglottitis?" Foreman suggested. House looked at him, the expression of finding a possible diagnosis on his face.

"Continue."

"Epiglottitis is caused when the cartilage covering the windpipe swells. It causes the sore throat, the fever, and it blocks the windpipe from getting any air, causing respiratory arrest."

"Test for Epiglottitis. Perform a laryngoscopy. See what's going on in his windpipe."

XxXxXxXxXxXx

Cameron and Chase were in the operating room with the patient. The twenty-six-year-old, named Jared, was lying on his back on an operating table.

"Now, Jared, this won't take too long, only about a half an hour. We're doing a laryngoscopy. That means we're going to put a laryngoscope down you're throat to see what's in there that caused you to stop breathing. We're going to spray your throat with anesthetic so you don't feel the instrument, okay? You ready?"

Jared nodded and Cameron handed Chase the anesthetic spray so he could numb Jared's mouth. She held his mouth open while he sprayed around inside.

"Cameron, can you hand me the laryngoscope?"

Cameron nodded and picked up the instrument. It was a long, thin tube with a little light on the end. Cameron held Jared's mouth open while Chase fed the laryngoscope down his throat. It didn't take long for him to find a problem. Chase started having difficulty sliding it further into Jared's throat. He made a face as he tried forcing it. Cameron picked up on it.

"What's wrong?"

"It won't go in."

"Well, of course it won't go in. If his windpipe is blocked due to swelling, it's not going to go in."

"But it still goes down a little. Not like there's something blocking it, but like there's something stuck around the edges slowing it down."

"Well then, here. Pull it out." Cameron told him as she reached over to help Chase with the instrument.

"Oh, yeah" she commented "It's not willing to come out either. It's like trying to pull a rope through tar."

When the laryngoscope finally came out it really had looked like it had been pulled through tar. There was a thick, black substance covering most of it, like someone had dragged it through a tar pit. Cameron and Chase looked dumbfounded.

"That's not Epiglottitis..." Chase whispered, still staring semi-horrified at the instrument. The tar-like substance started dripping thickly into the table, contaminating the various medical instruments sitting on it.

XxXxXxXxXxXx

"Okay, so his windpipe's not swollen, meaning it's not Epiglottitis. And now his throat's filling up with tar." House said. He limped over to the white board and wrote 'black residue in the throat' under the other symptoms in erasable marker.

"Any other bright ideas?"

"It could always be Lung Cancer." Cameron offered. Chase shot it down immediately.

"There's no history of Cancer in his family. _And_ he doesn't smoke _or_ do drugs."

"There are plenty of other causes for Cancer rather than just genetics and cigarette smoke. What about his environment? Where does he work?" Cameron asked. It was Foreman's turn to speak up.

"He _is_ a coal miner. That's a _huge_ risk for Lung Cancer."

"Could be. Anything else?" House asked, secretly hoping it wasn't Cancer. Not for the patient's sake, but for his. It meant the case was solved and it really hadn't been all that interesting. It was for that reason, and the other little reason tugging at the back of his mind. House willed it to go away, but it ignored orders. He wondered what Cuddy was doing right now...

"Um...Coal Worker's Pneumoconiosis. It explains the tar in his throat and the breathing problems." Cameron hardly got the words to leave her lips before House cut her off.

"Doesn't explain the fever. Go test for Lung Cancer. X-Ray his chest. I need to check up on something." And he limped through the door before anyone could even ask where he was going.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"What do you want, House?" Wilson asked as soon as he heard the door knob click.

"What's wrong with Cuddy?"

"What? How should I know?"

"Because you're annoying, overprotective, and you obsess yourself with the needs of everyone around you." House had meant it as an insult. He limped over to the couch, tossed his cane against the arm, laid down, and closed his eyes as if he were going to fall asleep.

"She's worried over some guy's health, I don't really know who, she wouldn't say..."

"Okay." Wilson paused at this.

"Wait...You're satisfied with that answer? Really?"

"Sure. If she's too distraught to tell you, then obviously you're not going to find out anymore. And besides, we need to respect the grieving woman's privacy, right?" If a normal person had heard him, he or she would have thought House was being sincere, because he had intended to sound that way. Only someone who's known House as long as Wilson had could tell that the famous diagnostician was being sarcastic.

"You don't care about other people's privacy...or happiness for that matter. And when something like this comes to your attention you never rest until you find out what it is. So either you don't know and are planning on going to Cuddy, which you know won't work so you're coming to me first to spare yourself the confrontation. Or you _do_ know and are coming to me to...what? Test me? Why?"

"Because I've turned my life around and have taken a sudden interest in the love lives of those around me. I find it very inspirational for writing poetry. So how often do you two have sex?"

"House, I'm not sleeping with Cuddy!"

"Okay."

"House-" But before the conversation could continue he was gone.

XxXxXxXxXxXx

"What, House?" This time it was Cuddy who asked. She was sitting behind the desk in her office, instinctively looking up when House entered.

"Jared might have Lung Cancer. There was a black residue in his throat. If it's in the throat it's probably in the lungs. It also probably caused the respiratory arrest."

"Out. Now." Her voice suddenly went serious. She was suddenly defensive. House took it as an invitation to harass her.

"Out? But I thought you cared about-"

"House, go away."

"My...aren't we moody." And House left the room. However, just before he left he paused at the door. And he coughed. It was accompanied by the feeling that there was something crawling down his throat, like mucus.

"Have a cold, House?" Cuddy asked him. He opened his mouth like he was going to answer right away but then thought better of it and changed his words.

"Yeah...A cold."

"House, you sound strange, is your throat-" And he was gone.

**Ta-da! I really hope this one's a little more exciting. I'm trying to make it like a real House episode. I want it to be exciting, but I don't want the whole thing to be about how everyone is on everyone else's nerves, mood swings...I want it to focus on the medicine as well, not just ****on who's on who's nerves and which doctor caught which patient's disease. Although I do want that in there, too. Which means I'm doing as much medical research as I am actual story writing XD **


	3. Chapter 3

**This chapter is for all of you out there wondering what's wrong with House's throat. I make it pretty easy to guess here. **

**Btw, thanx to all who reviewed and are keeping up with this thing. Reviews give authors confidence that there are people enjoying what they do and are not a complete failure, so thanx again :)**

**EDIT: It has come to my attention that I made a slight medical error in this chapter so here is the edited version. It doesn't affect the plot and I only had to add a few extra paragraphs. Thanks for your understanding.  
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**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Three**

Jared was in the radiation room with Foreman and Chase. He was standing in front of an x-ray machine dressed in an x-ray gown. He was looking rather nervous, picking at his gown and fidgeting with his hair. His eyes darted around the room.

Foreman and Chase were standing in front of a screen, showing what the x-ray was going to photograph.

"We're going to need you to settle down." Foreman said in a soothing voice.

"S-sorry." Jared stuttered due to nervousness "Radiation makes me skittish."

"It's okay, just relax." Foreman continued "Now we're going to need you to take a deep breath and hold it until Dr. Chase or I tell you to stop."

Jared nodded and held his breath as best he could. After a few minutes...

"Thank-you, Jared, you can breathe now." Chase told him and Jared let go of his held breath.

"You're done now, Jared, Dr. Chase will take you back to your room." Just before Chase moved to lead him to his room something happened. Jared walked toward the door like normal- as if he were just walking across the room- until he ran into a wall. This worried Chase, who spoke up to ask about it."

"Jared, did you just run into the wall? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just tried to exit the wrong door, that's all."

This wasn't good for two reasons. One, Jared's speech was so slurred that Foreman and Chase could barely understand what their patient had said and two, there was no second door in the room. There was only one.

XxXxXxXxXxXx

"Okay, so we have two new symptoms: slurred speech and double vision." House announced as he added them to the list on the white board. He coughed. Not because his throat tickled, but because there was something in it that just wouldn't come up. The cough worsened the already prominent pain in his throat.

He took a wild cherry flavored cough drop out of his jacket pocket, unwrapped it from it's wrapper, and put it in his mouth.

"You sick, House?" Cameron asked. Foreman and Chase looked at him, expecting an answer.

"It's only a cold, probably caught it on clinic duty when Cuddy made me tend to all the idiots who came to a free clinic with only a cold thinking they were dying."

He continued to limp around the table, looking down on his team. After a short amount of time, however, he stopped and sat down in a chair a little ways apart from them.

"Are you alright? You're breathing hard." Chase pointed out.

"I'm fine!" House yelled, angry now. It was annoying when everyone insisted on asking if he was okay. Why couldn't they just leave his business to him and him alone?

Just as they were about to quiet down about it and discuss what Foreman and Chase had found on the chest x-ray, Cameron noticed something. She squinted her eyes, looking intently at House. Out of seemingly nowhere she got up from the table and walked briskly over to him. She reached for his forehead at the same time as he swatted her hand away.

"What part of 'fine' don't you understand?"

"You have a fever."

"Can we get back to the sick guy? I heard the afterlife isn't too pleasant this time of year, I'd really hate for him to have to go there."

"Okay. The x-ray was clean, according to it, his lungs are perfectly fine." Chase said.

"Great. Then why don't we just send him home, you know, since he's fine? Oh yeah, there's the whole black tar filling his throat suffocating him thing. You think that'll be much of a problem in his day-to-day life?"

"The double vision and slurred speech point to a neurological problem. Let's do an MRI to check his brain." Foreman suggested.

"A brain problem wouldn't cause his throat to ooze black tar." countered Cameron.

"It might." It was House's turn to get in on the conversation "If he's a coal miner, he's sure to have all kinds of residue from the coal stuck in the back of his throat from breathing it day in and day out. If his brain happens to go haywire and he happens to have a cold at the same time, the mucus from the cold will mix with the coal, creating a black sludge. The cold explains the sore throat and the fever, the brain going haywire explains the double vision and slurred speech."

"But what about the respiratory arrest?" Chase asked "A brain problem couldn't cause that, could it?"

"The respiratory arrest wasn't caused by his brain." House told him "It happened when the black sludge in his throat blocked too much of his windpipe for it to get any oxygen through."

"So then it actually was a cold all along? And he just happened to catch it around when his brain happened to go haywire and when he decides to come here to treat the cold?" Cameron asked "It sounds a little too coincidental to me."

"Weirder things have happened. Besides, nobody asked you."

"I guess we'll go do a MRI to look for something in his brain." Foreman sighed and House's team left the differential diagnosis room.

After he was sure his team was too far away to see or hear him, House put his hand to his neck and massaged his throat. It really hurt. He put his hand on his forehead. He guessed about...101, maybe 102. He was about to dismiss his anxious and suspicious feelings as paranoia when something occurred to him.

As quickly as he possibly could he limped to the men's restroom. As he was moving he felt the chills from the fever and the soreness of his throat. He almost couldn't speak, it hurt so bad now. The chills were right in his bones. He could feel the heat coming off of his skin, yet he was cold enough that he was half tempted to pilfer some blankets from the storage area.

He threw open the door to the restroom. By now it was about eight o'clock at night and it was dark out, the orange-yellow lighting of the room making it seem almost eerie. Luckily for House, there was no one else in the restroom at the time.

He stood in front of a mirror and stared at his reflection. He looked like someone who had passed out drunk in the middle of a highway before promptly getting hit by a semi. His skin was clammy and pale as a ghost. He was sweating profusely. How could this have happened in such a short amount of time? Perhaps he already looked this bad when he was in the deferential diagnosis room with his team? He was too panicked to think about it now.

And he wouldn't even have any reason to be panicked- these were just symptoms of the flu or a bad cold- if it weren't for the tiny little notion that had occurred to him.

House left the bathroom and went to the nurse's station.

"Hey, you."

"Yes, Dr. House?"

"Where are the scrubs that were used to enter the clean rooms from earlier? Did you change them out yet?"

"No, they should still be there."

With that piece of information gathered he hurried as quickly as his bad leg would carry him to the patient's room. However, instead of going inside, he began fishing through the scrubs to find the one he had worn earlier.

When it had been found he pulled it out of the bin and inspected it. After a few minutes of not finding anything, he was about to give up, before he saw something. On the sleeve of the thing, was a small, yet visible tear.

House took off his jacket and pulled up his sleeve. Right on his upper arm, exactly where the tear in the sleeve was, was a thin red line. It was a cut from where he had bumped his arm on the cupboard door only this morning.

Had the patient, after he was breathing once again, coughed on his arm or something? He hadn't been bleeding, nobody drew any blood from him. There was no need to, it was a respiratory arrest. House stood perfectly still and tried to take his mind back to those moments hours ago. He replayed the scene in his mind over and over but could not determine whether or not the patient had even so much as come in contact with him.

This discovery told him nothing other than that it could have happened. He would need more proof.

House threw the scrubs back in the bin and hurried back to the men's restroom. Standing in front of the mirror again he began to cough. Not just cough- hack. He began forcing whatever mucus was stuck in his throat to come up. He needed to see it. He needed to see if it was mucus or-

He refused to finish that thought. This was just paranoia, right? The thing with the scrubs from earlier, it was a coincidence, right?

He hoped he was right as he ignored the white hot agony his throat threw at him as he forced harsh cough after harsh cough.

Finally -finally- after a good five minutes of body-shaking coughs, House coughed up what he was looking for. It oozed from his lips and dripped into the sink in front of him in thick drops.

He stared at it, unable to believe his eyes. He didn't want to believe it was there, yet there it was, plain as day.

It could have been mucus, mucus was necessary for colds. It was always present when a person had one. It could have been any number of things, really. But House's heartbeat quickened as he stared at...whatever it was he was staring at. Of all the things it could be, House knew only one thing about it for sure.

It was black.

**Dun Dun DUN! Let me know what you think :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry this chapter's kinda short-ish. It's around the same word count, it's just that the paragraphs are bigger. Enjoy :)  
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**The Common Cold  
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**Chapter Four**

House stared dumbfounded into the sink as the black sludge slowly slid down the bowl and into the drain. He was almost willing it to slide down further with his mind, as if by sheer force of willpower he could make it as if the sludge had never been there; it had never been inside him.

Was he dying? It was obvious he has whatever the twenty-six-year-old has, but he still didn't know what that was. Not knowing what the illness was had the unfortunate side effect of also not knowing if it was fatal. Judging from the respiratory arrest from earlier, there was a very real chance that it _was_ fatal. Meaning that he and the team had to figure out what this was fast, because if that patient died, it meant two things: One, it was fatal. And two, they couldn't stop it, which meant that he was a goner.

Trying to pull himself together, so to speak, House shook himself out of the trace-like state he had put himself in while thinking these things and limped out of the men's restroom. As luck would have it, on his way out of the bathroom he ran into Wilson, who was on his way in. Wanting to avoid as many people as possible after these traumatizing few moments, House tried to brush past Wilson but, unlike House, Wilson was an able-bodied person who didn't have an injured leg preventing him from moving very quickly. He grabbed House's arm as he tried to leave. House pulled away, but Wilson grabbed again, this time with a firmer grip.

"House, thank God. I've been looking everywhere for you. You're team asked me to find you, it's about your patient. Apparently the MRI was clean."

House, as if he never even heard Wilson, continued to try to get away.

"Let me go, Wilson, I have to talk to Cuddy."

"Cuddy's about to leave. What about your patient?"

"The patient isn't going to die in the middle of the night, he can wait. This can't. Let me go so I can catch Cuddy before she leaves!"

"Why are you so anxious to talk to Cuddy?"

"Damn it, Wilson! Can't you just once take my word that this is important?"

"No, I can't. No one can take your word on anything, House, because you lie too much."

"Everybody lies."

The conversation paused for a moment. Wilson had been too caught up in trying to talk to House about the patient that he didn't recognize how horrible he looked. He was in sorry shape. For a split second Wilson felt bad for not noticing it before, but the guilt soon passed when he remembered all the times House was an awful friend to him. At times he wondered why they were still even friends.

"House, what's wrong? You're white as a sheet. You aren't sick, are you?"

"Would I admit it if I was?" Wilson sighed heavily.

"No...no, you wouldn't."

"Alright then, let me see Cuddy." Defeated, Wilson let go of House and stood motionless as House limped his way down to Cuddy's office.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

House violently pushed open the door to Lisa Cuddy's office. Cuddy, startled at House's sudden entrance even though he's done it so many times she should be used to it by now, dropped the files and folders and other such things she was taking home for the night. Some of them fell on the desk, but some fell on the floor. She gathered the ones on the desk into a neat little pile, then bent over to pick up the ones that had fallen on the floor. Once this had been accomplished she turned her head to look at House, who was standing in the doorway the whole time. Her features took on a surprised look as she saw the state of health her co-worker was in.

"House, are you alright? What's wrong with you? You should take the day off tomorrow, get better."

"Cuddy, that's partially what I've come to talk to you about. You need to face this thing with Jared."

"I'll face it when I'm ready, House. I'm just not ready, yet."

"You need to get ready. Now."

"Why? Why is it so important that I'm ready to face something that doesn't even have to do with you? Is this another one of your stupid, selfish, egotistical maniac schemes, because I'm sick of them!"

Right after she said it, Cuddy knew she was wrong. This wasn't one of House's escapades. If it was one of House's schemes, he would be acting different. He would be all nice and ready with some smart and sarcastic comeback to make her mad. But his demeanor right now was closer to those few times he had come to her for help- serious help. And that worried her.

"House, I can tell by the look on your face something's wrong. What is it?"

"Cuddy, I can't take off tomorrow even though you know I'd love to, and you need to come to terms with this thing with Jared. I need to spend every iota of my energy solving this case. I need to be here to figure this out. It's become urgent. The reason it's become urgent is the same reason that you need to come to terms with Jared. I caught what Jared has. If I don't work with my team as often and as effectively as possible the same thing's going to happen to me that's happening to him. Cuddy, I think I'm dying. And if you don't learn how to cope with doing this with Jared, you're going to have a much rougher time coping with it happening to me."

A deafening silence filled the empty space between the two co-workers. Cuddy stood completely motionless for what could have been hours or only a few minutes. Her mixed emotions when it came to Gregory House were too confusing for her to sort out, so most of the time she just left them alone and ignored them in the far-off corner of the back of her mind. She never even thought that one day the time would come where she'd need to face those feelings, for one reason or another. And she certainly had never hoped that the reason would be someone's- two people's- immanent death. Mainly House's. It was like a bad dream and all she needed now was to wake up, though she knew full well that she never would snap out of it because it wasn't a dream. It was real -bitingly, stingingly real. And that hadn't changed, no matter how much she prayed in the silence of her heart.

"House, you're lying. You don't mean that. You're testing me, to see if I'll cave."

"Cuddy, why would I about my own state of health?" House asked, an obvious exasperation in his voice "Of all the things I've lied to you about, have I ever once lied about whether or not I was dying? I mean, I've hid it from you as long as I thought I could handle it, but have I ever lied the other way around? Have I ever told you I was when I wasn't unless I truly thought I was? This isn't a game, and it doesn't matter how much the two of us pretend it is. We have to face the fact that Jared, whatever he is to you, is in that room dying of we don't know what. And as doctors we see so many people die a day, it doesn't matter if he dies or not. But when a doctor becomes sick with whatever a patient has, that raises the urgency level higher than you can imagine. Hell, why am I telling you this? You know all this. You just don't want to admit it!"

"House, get out. Please. I just can't do this right now. I need time. Please understand."

"Okay, sure. You need time. You're not ready. When will you be ready? When Jared dies of unknown causes and I'm on my deathbed gasping for my last breaths? Will you be ready then? Or will it be when I'm already gone and they're putting me in the ground?" And with that House limped out of the room, leaving Cuddy standing in her office alone, upset, but worst of all afraid.


	5. Chapter 5

**Okay, so this is a long chapter and it was loads of fun to write. I would have split it up into two chapters but it was all one thing happening and there really was no good spot I saw fit to split it at, so I hope you enjoy this (really) long chapter.**

**EDIT: Oopsies. More medical accuracy mistakes. I'm both human and not a medical professional, so I'm sorry about that. Here's the edited version of the chapter.  
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**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Five**

It was about ten o'clock at night when House was in his apartment readying himself for bed. He paused when he entered his bedroom and sighed. He looked about the dreary old place and an overwhelming feeling of depression swept over him. His little apartment was cramped, drab, and lonely. Everything was colored with dark shades of grey, brown and black. It was an unhappy and forlorn place for an unhappy and forlorn man.

House was just about to begin changing into something to sleep in when the irritating little ditty of his cell phone ringtone started going off. He fished around in his jacket pocket for a few seconds to try to find the annoying thing. After he had located it and was holding it in his hand, he took a look at the caller ID. Wilson. What did he want? Sure, Wilson had always worried about him, but he couldn't have a clue what was going on. When he suspected that he was dying the only person he told was Cuddy. Unless...

House flipped open the sorry phone and put it to his ear. He began to speak before Wilson even got the chance to open his mouth.

"You wonder why I never tell you when something's wrong? It's because people like you always make a big deal out of it! When did you talk to Cuddy?"Wilson let out a very audible sigh.

"House, I was worried. I knew the reason you went to talk to Cuddy was to discuss whatever's wrong with you so I asked her after you left. You looked like death itself was walking around Princeton-Plainsboro! What was I supposed to do?"

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe _LET ME HANDLE IT?_ My patient Jared has the same thing I do, I got it from him. He looks as bad as I do, maybe worse. You don't care about how he's doing? It's the same thing. And as a special bonus, his is more advanced than mine is!"

"I don't care about him! I care about you, House! You're my best friend. Believe it or not there are some things that even you can't understand! You think that just because you think a certain way, everyone else has to think that way, too! Unlike you, the rest of the world doesn't care what disease a friend or loved one has! All they care about is getting them well again. And if they can't get well again, at least being there for them while they die. The rest of the world isn't like you. They don't obsess over what the illness is, no matter if the person harboring it lives or dies. Believe it or not, House, there are some people in this world who just care about the sanctity of human life."

"Wilson, I-I...uh...ah...hhh..."

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Wilson stopped ranting when he heard the harsh rasping sounds coming from House's end of the line. Wilson, knowing what happened to Jared earlier in the day, was sure the same was happening to House. His emotions for his friend got the best of his tendencies as a doctor. He froze. His mind went blank. He practically shut himself off from reality and couldn't snap himself out of it. He was an oncologist! He deals with Cancer for Pete's sake and he couldn't do anything about something that doesn't even come close to Cancer.

Everything went to Hell when House stopped breathing.

At least the rasping sounds meant there was still air getting through, no matter how small the amount. When the sounds stopped, it meant the air stopped. It meant House was suffocating.

Wilson grabbed his coat and his cell phone and all but sprinted out the door.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

House was listening to Wilson go off about the sanctity of human life (again. Like he hasn't done _that_ before) when he noticed something wrong. He went to speak when...he couldn't. He went to suck in a breath and his lungs couldn't get anything. They were sucking at something solid, or close to solid. They were sucking at something that was close enough to a solid to block his windpipe, something like black sludge.

"Wilson, I-I...uh...ah...hhh..."

House tried desperately to get air in, but the effort was futile. The more his lungs struggled, the harder breathing became. After only a little while he wasn't getting any air at all. He stopped making sounds. He froze, staring at his cell phone. In only a moment the lack of air completely robbed him of all ability to do anything and because of this, House collapsed. He fell forward, on his knees one second, the very next on his face on his bedroom floor. His cane toppled to the carpet beside him. Doctor Gregory House was unconscious on the floor of the bedroom of his apartment.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Cuddy, I'm sorry it's so late but we have a major issue. I called House after you told me about his condition. He reprimanded me for it as usual but I'm glad I did it. Because if I hadn't House would be dead. He's lucky I was still on the line when this happened, or things could have gotten worse than they already are. You need to-"

"Wilson, calm down. Slowly and calmly tell me what happened."

"House went into respiratory arrest. He's dying, Cuddy."

Cuddy dropped everything and ran just like Wilson. If House was going to die, it was going to be a hospital issue. His reputation (as well as his ego) was enormous. If someone as well-known as House were to die, especially because of something he caught at the hospital, Princeton-Plainsboro's reputation would plummet. But this wasn't even about that. No, this was a little more personal. This was about Cuddy. Cuddy knew she was going to suffer if House kicked the bucket. It would have killed her inside, metaphorically speaking. However, knowing something and admitting it, are two completely different things entirely.

Before she knew it she was in her car on her way to House's apartment.

"Cuddy."

Wilson was still on the other line.

"Cuddy, are you alright? I know how hard this must be for you. House means...something to you. But you know, Jared-"

"Will you stop bringing up Jared? House and Jared have nothing to do with each other!"

"Or..." Wilson began "They have everything to do with each other."

Cuddy and Wilson arrived at House's apartment at the same time. They each got out of their cars and ran to the front door. They didn't stop moving until they got to his door. Wilson hit his fists against the door so hard one of the neighbors actually opened their door to find out what was happening.

"Hey, what's the big idea?" the guy asked. He was a big guy; one of the angry and bald types who watches football and drinks beer all day long. Wilson was about to apologize for the noise and explain things when suddenly Cuddy spoke up.

"Listen, you pompous asshole! We need to get in there, this is important! Your neighbor just suffered respiratory arrest, he could be in there dying right now!" He said nothing.

"You really shut him up."

"Yeah, well.."

"The door won't open. And I've already checked around for a hidden key." Wilson breathed, exasperated. It was apparent that his exasperation was caused by his worry. He looked at Cuddy, desperate. She looked back at him for a few seconds, until she had an idea. She opened her purse and got out her wallet. Out of her wallet she pulled a credit card. She held it up for Wilson to see.

"You know how to pick a lock with a credit card?" Wilson asked "I thought that was more of House's sort of specialty?"

"No, actually I have no clue how." Cuddy admitted "But it's our only hope. We can't find a key. If we don't get in there soon, House will die."

"Good point."

Cuddy slid the card in the crack between the door and the door frame until she heard a faint click. It only took a few seconds. She opened the door and Wilson followed her inside.

"Wow. You have a real talent."

They ran about the apartment looking for House. Wilson soon came to the bedroom where he found House lying face down on the carpet.

"Cuddy! In the bedroom!"

She quickly made her way to House's bedroom to find Wilson kneeling next to him.

"Come on, " he said "help me turn him over." He grabbed his feet while Cuddy made her way around to his head. They both lifted him up at the same time, flipping him over onto his back. Wilson put a hand to his chest, and then his first two fingers to his neck. Then he held his hand over House's mouth and nose, not detecting any air coming out.

"Thank God. We're not too late. His heart's still beating. He still can't breathe. Not only is there an absence of air leaving his nose and mouth his chest isn't rising or falling either."

"Wilson, Heimlich Maneuver." Cuddy pointed out.

"Right. Thanks for reminding me."

Wilson got on top of House, straddling him at the hips. He put one hand on top of the other and pressed his palms into House's abdomen, right below his ribcage. He applied pressure sharply and quickly every couple seconds. He became frantic the more he did this. It wasn't working. Time for step two.

"Cuddy, it's not working. I'm starting CPR."

Wilson put his lips on House's and blew. He then pressed on his chest. One, two, three, four, five...

Cuddy got out her cell phone and called Princeton-Plainsboro.

"Hello? It's Cuddy. Please send an ambulance to Dr. House's apartment. Yes...Dr. House. Dr. Wilson and I found him unconscious in his bedroom. He's not breathing. Thank-you." She turned to Wilson.

"Anything?"

"He's alive. Let's keep it that way. The CPR doesn't seem to be doing much. You just called an ambulance?"

"Yeah..."

"You're scared."

"Yeah."

"You're scared because you have feelings-"

"Can the conversation about my mixed emotions for the hospital's number one insufferable jerk wait until _after_ we've saved his life?"

When the ambulance arrived Wilson, Cuddy, and the paramedics were able to get him inside and strapped to a gurney. Wilson and Cuddy stayed in the back with him, Wilson continuing the CPR.

Cuddy looked at his face. He was pale, he still had the fever, sweating, everything. House was so dominating it was hard to imagine him like this. House was one of those people you always imagined would die of old age or a car crash simply because you couldn't imagine him looking so weak and helpless in a hospital. It was the most depressing thing Cuddy had seen in a long time.

It wasn't long before the ambulance pulled into Princeton-Plainsboro. It drove around to the ambulance loading area and the paramedics got out of the front seats. They ran around to the back, opened it, and rolled House's gurney out onto the pavement with Wilson and Cuddy following behind. They rolled him into the hospital itself, suddenly throwing the whole place into pandemonium.

"Everyone move!" Wilson shouted. They kept running until they got him into a room with some sort of respiratory equipment. Once inside the room he was put on mechanical ventilation. Cuddy tried forcing the tube down House's throat. It wouldn't budge. The tube would only go down so far, then it refused to go any further. Wilson stopped her before she damaged something.

"It's all that black -whatever it is- in his throat. It won't allow the tube to go through!"

"We have to get him air somehow!"

"Do it the way you did earlier, use a surgical breathing tube, forget the mechanical ventilator!"

Cuddy nodded, picked a scalpel up from the nearby table, and made an incision in House's throat. She set everything up and threaded the tube down into the hole. She took a balloon-like instrument and hooked it up to the tube, squeezing it regularly to give House's lungs some air. After a few minutes of this, things began to calm down.

"Now that his lungs are getting air," Wilson explained "they'll eventually clear the blockage on their own." He held his hand over House's nose and mouth, so he could inform Cuddy when House started getting air on his own. After about five minutes he felt a slight breath come from his mouth, then another, They were sporadic at first, but then became stronger and more regular.

"Okay, Cuddy, you can stop." Wilson told her "He's breathing on his own. He's okay."

Cuddy removed the balloon-like instrument and relaxed. She let out a deep sigh of relief and sat down on one of the chairs on the edge of the room. One of the nurses removed the tube and began sewing the incision shut. Wilson walked over and put his hand on Cuddy's shoulder. She was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees. Her face was buried in her hands. One small tear trickled down her cheek before she raised her head.

Wilson saw the complete exhaustion written all over her face. By now it was eleven o'clock at night and she had just dealt with the near death experience of a man she had mixed feelings for. She had a right to be upset.

"Cuddy, he's okay. He's breathing again, he'll be fine."

She said nothing. She just stared out the window close to her chair, the only window in the room. She sat wishing that everything would just be over. She wished her whole dilemma would just disappear.

**I promise, more new symptoms and such in the next chapter ;)**


	6. Chapter 6

**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Six**

Cameron, Chase, and Foreman walked into Princeton-Plainsboro the next morning almost in panic. Who wouldn't be, when they get a call at night while they're at home sleeping saying that their boss almost died? Of course, it was House, so...almost. It was mind boggling. The case had taken on a new urgency. If they didn't find out what this was it wasn't just another case of "the patient dies". Not anymore. Now that House has it, it meant that if they didn't find out which illness it was and what the cure was, not only was the patient dying but he was going to drag their boss down with him. Jared seemed stable enough, and so did House after last night. But with no way to do anything about the black goo (taking it out would be futile because the illness in the body would just make more), the respiratory arrest could flare up at any time. With the patient that was no problem because there were nurses and other doctors in the hospital twenty-four/seven, but House had a tendency to...refuse help and ignore the things he's told.

"Hello." Wilson had just spotted the team in the halls on the way up to House' office and decided to join them.

"Wilson, hi," Cameron greeted "Crazy, what happened to House, right?"

"It was crazy, alright. He went into respiratory arrest at home last night. Cuddy and I broke into his apartment, got him here, and kept him alive until we could get air coming through his windpipe again. I can only think of what might have happened if I hadn't been on the phone with him. He lives alone, no one would have found anything until he didn't come to work today. And even then, House has a reputation for skipping on work so we probably would have dismissed it for another few days. By then, he would have been dead."

"Wilson, don't worry about what might have happened and focus on what did." Chase assured him as the four of them entered the elevator. The elevator closed, then opened again a few seconds later and they continued the walk to House's office.

"Exactly. Sure, House could have died, but he didn't. So let's just focus on getting him better." Foreman agreed.

"Thanks for the support. It's nice to know that while I'm giving House someone to count on, there are people I have around me to count on myself." And with that they reached the clear door, the name "Dr. Gregory House, M.D." in white lettering. It was at that point Wilson decided to leave them and head to his own office.

Cameron, Chase, and Foreman all filed into House's office, only to find him sitting in the chair, bouncing his red and grey ball against the walls, floor, and ceiling. He still looked like he had gotten hit by a truck, seeing as how his fever was still there and he was still suffering from all the symptoms he was yesterday. The sight of him so relaxed when the situation clearly wasn't was...comical.

"House!" Cameron exclaimed "You have the same thing as our patient and you're_ here!_ You're contagious!" House didn't seem to see it as that big of a deal, judging from the way he replied to that comment.

"Oh, I'm sorry. You see, I was feeling particularly mean this morning -you know, almost dying can do that to a person- and I decided to get my revenge I would infect the entire hospital with a nasty, unknown disease. What, too much?"

"House! What did Cuddy say about this?"

"She has to know? Relax, I haven't infected anybody, I've been in here. That's why we're doing the differential diagnosis like this. Go into the other room, I'll stay here."

Cameron, Chase, and Foreman sighed, lowered their heads and went through the other door into the differential diagnosis room. They sat around the table. After only a few seconds Foreman's cell phone went off. He got it out and answered it, hearing House's voice. They all turned to look into their boss's office to find him reclining behind his desk with his legs up. He waved in a sarcastic, child-like manner, not forgetting to put the phone on speaker before he leaned back to throw the ball around again. Foreman put the phone in the middle of the table and switched on the speaker mode as well.

"Okay, what causes fever, sore throat, respiratory arrest, double vision, and slurred speech?" House asked his team through the phone. Chase was the first to speak up.

"This can't be one disease. It has to be two. The black sludge is in his throat, the vision and speech problems point to the brain. I still think it's a bad cold, coal dust in his throat, along with a brain disease."

"But the MRI was clean" Foreman argued "If there was something in his brain, we would have seen it."

"The brain actually isn't that far from the nose and throat. It isn't that far-fetched to think they're related." Cameron spoke up.

"Are you just going to sit there arguing, or am I actually going to get a disease I can test this guy for?"

"What about Clostridium?" Foreman asked "It's a pathogen that causes things like food poisoning, but can also cause fatal diseases in some cases. It explains the vision, fever-" Cameron interrupted.

"But he isn't paralyzed and he doesn't have rapid muscle necrosis."

"Clostridium doesn't have to cause paralysis or rapid muscle necrosis. It can cause a number of different diseases besides food poisoning and ones that appear as vision problems and fever." Chase said.

"Have you maybe considered that it isn't a disease at all? What if something's inside his body causing a bunch of reactions?" Cameron suggested. House had never missed an opportunity to insult his team, and he wasn't going to start now.

"Something inside him...you mean like...bacteria or, you know, something that causes sickness?" He said in the most sarcastic way possible.

"I mean, what if his case is similar the the kid with the toothpick inside him, or the nun with the copper cross? What if there's some object inside him causing a reaction to the coal dust in his throat creating the black sludge. The reaction caused by the object causes all of his other symptoms."

"You're forgetting one crucial point- House has it." Foreman started to say. House interrupted him.

"Can we talk about the patient? Not about me?"

"Don't flatter yourself, House." Chase retorted. Foreman sighed very audibly and continued.

"As I was saying, House has it. And last time we all checked, House doesn't have any weird objects inside him, and he's a doctor, not a coal miner. So he doesn't have coal dust in his throat, yet he has the same symptoms as the patient. It has to be a disease; something contagious."

"Speaking of contagious..."

Foreman, Cameron, Chase, and House all turned toward the door to see Cuddy standing there, arms crossed leaning against the doorway to House's office. She looked just like she always did when she was on the verge of scolding House. Her face was contorted into an angry expression, her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips were frowning. She lowered her gaze, letting her head drop until she was facing the floor. She closed her eyes and sighed, mentally preparing herself for the unavoidable argument that was about to ensue.

Foreman, Cameron and Chase didn't look very surprised, they figured Cuddy was going to call their boss on what he did. Roaming the hospital free was not exactly approved for someone who happened to be contagious and Cuddy was going to tell him that. House, too, looked as if he were mentally preparing for the confrontation with Cuddy. They decided to sit back and watch the show.

"House, why are you hanging out in your office when you're contagious! Get over here now, so I can take you to a clean room!"

"If I'm in a clean room, I can't diagnose the patient!"

"Let your team take care of the patient!"

"They need my help!"

"Or- they don't need your help and you just don't want to drop the case! You're addicted to puzzles! Once you've seen something that strikes your fancy you can't let it go until you've solved it!"

"Because I'm just that pathetic."

"House!"

Cameron, Chase, and Foreman, knowing this was going to end in Cuddy giving in to please House, decided to step in and speed things up. The three of them passed from the differential diagnosis room to House's office to attempt to force him to a clean room. They stormed his office. House, realizing what they were doing, tried to get up to attempt to get away. He knew that with his bad leg, it was futile. Cuddy was blocking the door into the hallway, Cameron was blocking the door to the differential diagnosis room, Foreman and Chase were headed for House.

House got up from his desk and backed up against the wall as Foreman took House's right arm and Chase took his left. He fought; it was obvious that what strength he lacked in his legs, he made up for in his arms. He struggled, so much so that Chase got knocked to the ground. Foreman tried to wrestle his cane away from him but it was useless. House knocked him in the shin before Foreman could get a hand on it.

"Careful." Cuddy warned "He is still contagious. If another one of you gets sick this hospital's in a lot of trouble. I don't need two or more of my doctors dying."

"Will you cut it out!" House shouted. It was a miracle no one in the halls turned around to find the source of all the noise.

"It doesn't seem like he's sick. He may have a fever and everything still but he fights like a bull!" Chase breathed, exasperated. He stood up from the ground to confront House again.

"Thank-you, Chase. I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"House, will you cooperate for once?" Cuddy asked. House rolled his eyes and chuckled in a rather sarcastic manner.

"Huh. As if." It was the that things got weird again.

"Sorry about this, House, but you don't give us any other choice." Foreman brought his arm back, his hand curled into a fist. He let his arm fly forward, like releasing the band on a sling shot.

In House's mind, time slowed. Foreman's fist came at him, and at first, it looked to him like Foreman was trying to hit him with both hands. Or two fists one one side of his body? House automatically knew something was wrong. And he knew what it was. It was the same thing that Jared has. House was seeing double.

Foreman couldn't stop his fist once he let it loose. He hit House square in the nose. House slid from his standing position against the wall to a sitting position against the wall, letting his cane drop as he did so. He brought his hand to his face, holding his nose. Luckily for him, Foreman was observant enough to catch the fact that there was something wrong with House.

"Something's wrong with him." Cuddy and Cameron, feeling that House was no longer standing and no longer had his cane, figured it was safe to move away from the doors. They walked over to the crowd of three.

"Of course there's something wrong with him." Cuddy pointed out "Not only is he sick with something we haven't diagnosed, you also hit him in the face."

"He didn't try to fight back." Foreman explained "Which can mean two things: one- he gave up, which isn't like him at all. Or two- he's disoriented."

Chase, seeming to catch on, knelt down to look House in the eye.

"Are you alright, House? Are you disoriented?"

House took brought his hand away from his face, only to discover that it was covered in blood.

"Damn." he cursed.

"You're nose is bleeding." Cameron said.

"Why yes, yes it is. You know what that means? I was hit in the nose!"

Everyone in the room stared at him. Not because of his bloody nose, although that was worrisome. It was because they had barely understood what House had said. The reason he was unable to be understood? He was slurring his words.

"Get him into a clean room. Now." Cuddy ordered. Foreman and Chase took his arms and led a very disoriented House out of the office.


	7. Chapter 7

**This chapter isn't _terribly_ exciting. A new symptom. Sorry it took so long, I've been busy. Here it is, though, chapter seven.  
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**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Seven**

House rolled his eyes as he sat behind the x-ray machine. Cuddy was looking at the screen displaying the x-ray of House's nose. After Foreman had punched him, he had bled so quickly, the team panicked as they held towels to his face. They applied pressure until the blood clotted enough that his nose stopped spewing crimson fluid. House wanted to protest, or at least make a snide remark, but with the newfound symptom of slurring, he couldn't exactly speak in a manner anyone would easily understand.

Cuddy, to make sure they didn't have to take such measures to get House back to the clean room, had a few of the security officers standing outside the door, ready to take him on if he tried to get away. Of course, with his leg, it wasn't like he was going anywhere very quickly.

She looked at the screen and sighed in such a way that showed the situation was exactly as she had suspected it was. She leaned into the microphone.

"It looks like it's broken, House." House simply scowled.

"We need to set it. Come on." They both left the x-ray room, Cuddy keeping a firm grip on House's arm.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

A while later House was in the clean room beside Jared's. He was hooked up to all kinds of monitors, beeping and flashing and doing all sorts of annoying things. He hated being in a clean room, or any hospital room for that matter, at least as a patient. He couldn't diagnose while in here. Well, he could, but it would involve Jared possibly hearing everything that was said and since he was the patient, that could get irritating. Not to mention his team wouldn't want to spend any more time in a clean room than necessary due to the obvious risk of getting infected.

He kept thinking of possible solutions to the mystery. They had exhausted seemingly every possibility. They knew it was an infection, that was what made them think it was the common cold in the first place. So what kind of infection looks like a cold at first, until black sludge starts filling your throat? He had the unshakable feeling that it was something obvious- something his mind was discarding, but shouldn't be. The answer was simple. It was right in front of his face, yet he couldn't see it. He hated it when the diagnosis turned out like that.

House had been looking around the room for some kind of clue to what he was missing when he noticed Jared's bed. He noticed, in particular, the bag for storing the patient's urine. A small portion of it was peeking from the other side of the bed. To House, looking at this man's symptoms was like looking at his future. His bleak future. He should have been scared, but strangely, he wasn't. He should have been terrified out of his mind-he was going to die. If the respiratory arrest didn't confirm it, this did. Jared wasn't scared yet, but that was because he was asleep and as of now had no idea that the urine in his bag was a rusty orange-brown. Jared had no idea that his kidneys were failing.

House pressed the nurse button on the side of his bed. The nurses at the nurse's station, saw what room the call was coming from, realized it was House, and paged his team to come to the room to investigate. Cameron, Chase, and Foreman came running into the room in their scrubs, looking panicked.

"House, are you alright?" Foreman asked. Once they saw that House was fine, they all seemed to relax a bit more.

"Don't scare us like that." Cameron said, exasperated "When we got the call from the nurse's station we thought you'd gone into respiratory arrest again!"

He wished so badly that he could make a snide comment. The fact that it would just come out sounding so slurred the comment would just come out sounding more stupid than funny.

So in an effort to avoid looking like an idiot, instead of telling his team about Jared's failing kidneys, he decided to show them. House got up out of the hospital bed.

"House, what are you doing?" Chase was the first to speak up "You're in bed for a reason!" The other two just stood and stared. To this day they never knew why they were so surprised. House did this every single time he got a patient like this and every single time they were surprised when he did something ridiculous or just plain dangerous.

House wanted to avoid talking as much as possible, so he walked over to Jared's bed. He had neglected to grab his cane, causing him to limp very heavily on his right leg. He moved around to the opposite side of the bed, where Jared's bag of urine was hanging. He lifted it for his team to see, his face giving away the full danger of the situation.

"His kidneys are failing..." Cameron muttered.

"I guess we'll start him on something to help his kidneys..." Foreman said "Whatever this is it's spread there."

"What goes from the throat, to the brain, and then jumps all the way down to the kidneys? Nothing in the middle is sick. Why are only certain parts of his body being effected and not everything?" Chase asked.

"It could be his heart." Cameron suggested. The heart pumps blood everywhere in the body."

"Or it could be the blood itself." Foreman said.

"If it was the blood his whole body would be sick, wouldn't it?" Chase asked, trying to disprove the theory.

"Well, the same could be said for the heart." Foreman mentioned.

"I say we biopsy the kidneys," Chase told them "to see what kind of bacteria is eating away at them."

"We should probably biopsy House's kidneys as well." Cameron insisted "They have the same condition. If Jared's kidneys are failing now, House's will be shot by this time tomorrow."

They looked to their boss for approval. House gave them an answer by shooting them a dirty look.

"Biopsy his kidneys." he ordered, hating the way his voice sounded, slurring the way he was. He sounded drunk.

"Biopsy his, but you're not touching mine."

"House-"

"Listen. We have the same condition. You don't need to biopsy mine because his are in the same shape. Find out what's wrong with his, you find out what's wrong with mine. And mine don't need to be touched." He hoped they were able to understand all of that.

"Oh, and MRI his heart while you're at it."

His team simply nodded and walked out of the room.


	8. Chapter 8

**Okay, so this was a really fun chapter to write! It involves excitement, and more symptom-involved twists and turns!  
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**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Eight**

Foreman was in the room with Jared ready to do the biopsy. He had brought Chase in with him to help out. Chase stood watching over the whole operation while Foreman stood beside Jared holding a rather large needle. Jared was lying on his back on a gurney, staring wide-eyed at the needle.

"What's that?" he slurred "Where are you putting it?"

"This is a biopsying needle," Foreman explained "We're going to stick it in one of your kidneys. It's going to take a piece of it off so we can test it, examine it, and hopefully find out what's wrong with it."

"Is it going to hurt?" Chase spoke up.

"Yes, actually. You will feel a pinch. But don't worry, you'll be okay. It's no big deal, really."

Jared nodded slowly like he understood, but really didn't accept what was being said. He was still scared. Foreman, unable to wait for the patient to be ready due to the impending death hanging over all of their heads, began the biopsy. He stuck the needle in Jared's right side, just above his waist. Jared lifted his head and shoulders a little and his mouth opened a little out of pain, but no sound came out, and he was fine a few seconds later. Foreman put the kidney sample inside a sterile plastic zip-lock bag and sealed it.

"That's it. I'll go take a look at this under a microscope while Chase here takes to to get an MRI done of your heart." Jared nodded as Chase took him out of the room.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Jared was lying down once again, this time on the table of an MRI machine. Chase and Cameron were in the balcony above, sealed away behind glass, looking at the monitor. Jared was looking at the roof of the MRI machine, as still as death.

"That's discouraging," Cameron sighed "His heart's clean."

"You know," Chase said "I kind of figured it would be."

"Yeah, so did I..." Cameron turned her head to the side and stared out into open space somewhere, letting her mind wonder and worry. Chase noticed this and picked up on it easily.

"There's something wrong. And I bet I know what it is."

"What? How would you know?"

"Cameron, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you're worried about House."

"I'm not-"

"Cameron, come on. You're scared House is gonna die; I can read it all over your face. Listen. House has gotten himself into some pretty hot water. He's been shot, for crying out loud. He's gonna be fine. You care way too-"

"You don't know that. How can you be so confident he's going to be okay this time? Every other time it was his doing, even getting shot. If he hadn't been such an ass it would never have happened. This time it isn't his doing. It was under his control before, you have to admit. As stupid as some of his stunts were, he always knew what he was doing and had them under complete control. Not this time. This time even he has no clue how this is going to turn out."

"That's not the only reason you're obsessing."

"If this is going to turn into another 'Cameron only likes dying men' conversation let's stop it before it begins. I do not like House because he's dying or crippled or whatever it was you were going to say."

"Maybe you do, maybe you don't. All I know is that wasn't what I was going to say. I was going to say that now you don't have to worry about Cuddy interfering because now Jared-"

"How dare you even assume that, Chase!" Cameron abruptly stood up from her chair in front of the screen, almost knocking the screen and the chair over "How dare you assume that!"

"Listen, I was just stating what it looked like, I didn't mean-"

Their conversation was cut off by the sound of both of their pagers going into hyper-drive almost simultaneously. With two expressions of shocked concern, both doctors looked at each other, then at their pagers. Cameron was the first to recover herself enough to speak.

"It's House."

"We have to get Jared out of the MRI machine." Chase said "We have to go fix House and we can't leave him here alone."

"What about Foreman? He works for House. He won't be coming down with us or maybe to watch Jared?"

"Foreman's still looking at the biopsy sample." Chase explained "He's busy saving our patient. Let's go."

Chase leaned in to the microphone to explain to Jared what was happening; that they needed to get him out of there. He was sure the patient could hear the panic rising in his voice, but he didn't care at that point. No, at that point he was just trying to keep people from dying. Namely his boss.

"Jared, we have to get you out of there. Please don't panic and cooperate with us nicely. Something urgent has come up and Dr. Cameron and I need to leave immediately."

Jared, in a sort of scared slur, managed to give his consent to cooperate, so Cameron and Chase let him out of the MRI machine and moved as quickly as possible with Jared to the room he and House shared. A nurse got Jared situated again as Cameron and Chase burst into the room, making quite the entrance.

"What happened?" Cameron was the first to ask, but one look at House revealed the answer before the nurse could say it.

House's skin was ghostly white, clammy, and as cold as ice. His eyes were darting around the room like marbles in a pinball machine. Sweat beaded his forehead, arms, and any visible (and invisible) part of his body. His lips were blue. The overall appearance of his expression was anxious, nervous even. His chest was moving up and down at a pace way too quick to be normal. His breathing was fast-paced and dangerous. One look at the heart monitor revealed that House's heartbeat wasn't just fast- it was rapid. House had all the signs of-

"Is he in shock?" Chase asked incredulously.

"Looks like it." one of the nurses told him.

"This doesn't make sense." Cameron thought out loud "Jared hasn't gone into shock yet. Judging by Jared's symptoms, House's kidneys should be failing, he shouldn't be going into shock! You think that maybe they don't have the same condition, and that they just happened to have similar symptoms up to this point?"

"And House happened to catch it while being around Jared? Purely coincidentally? No, it's more likely that this is a disease that starts in one place and just spreads wherever it wants to. It starts in the throat, that's why they had the same symptoms at first. It spread to Jared's kidneys first. But with House, it just spread to a different part of his body at a different time."

"Okay, so what diseases do we know that do that?"

They didn't have time to discuss it before one of the nurses trying to get House stable interrupted them.

"Do you two mind? You didn't get called down here to stand and talk. Help us with him or please leave."

Chase and Cameron looked at each other, sighed, and hurried over to House's bedside to help.

"It's ridiculously hot in here, too dangerous if he gets overheated. Someone go get some ice packs!" Chase shouted as he felt House's forehead, roughly estimating his temperature, trying to see if he was overheated enough to have one.

Cameron nodded and ran out of the room to get ice packs. While she was gone Chase and some of the nurses made sure House was lying flat on his back. Chase took the pillow out from under House's head and put it under his feet, elevating the lower part of his body just a little.

They got House situated just as Cameron came back into the room with ice packs and...Wilson.

"What's Wilson doing here?" Chase asked.

"I ran into him getting the ice packs." Cameron explained "He asked why I was rushing, I told him about House, he wanted to come in."

"Alright, but we need him helping us."

Wilson nodded and started helping Cameron, Chase, and the nurses put ice packs all over House's body to cool him down. They took off his pants and shirt, seeing as how clothing was playing a significant part in heating him up. Once he was down to his underwear they began covering him with ice packs. Pretty soon the ice was covering his forehead, arms, legs, chest, anywhere they thought might help.

"His body temperature should be stable." Cameron said.

"What caused the shock?" Wilson asked. Cameron and Chase looked to the nurses, who were in the room first and therefore might have seen something they were too late to see.

"I don't know." one of them told the doctors "We happened to be passing through the halls when his heart monitor started going wild. We came in and he was like this."

House had fallen unconscious sometime during all the commotion. It was noticeable, simply because at the same time, his heart rate vanished. The entire room was thrown into panic as Cameron, Chase, Wilson, and the nurses scrambled around trying to save House from an untimely death.

"He's flatlined!" Chase shouted "Get me the defibrillator paddles!" After receiving no answer he tried again, angrier this time, the panic almost engulfing him.

"Get me the damn paddles!" he ordered. Almost immediately a nurse was hurrying over with the defibrillator paddles.

Chase switched the defibrillator on and set the electrode pads on the appropriate spots on his boss's chest. One was placed on the upper right side of his chest, the other was placed on the lower left side. Chase picked up the paddles and held them in the air in front of him.

"Clear!" he warned and set them to House's chest. His body jumped, but his heart rate didn't change. It remained a flat line.

Cameron leaned in to feel for a pulse, double-checking. When she felt none, she leaned back out of the way.

"Clear!" Chase shouted again, once more touching the paddles to House's chest. And once more, nothing.

"It isn't working! What if we can't save him?" Cameron yelled, grabbing Chase's arm and trying to make her voice heard over all of the panicky noise. Chase pulled his arm away and turned toward her.

"We'll worry about that later." he retorted "Right now it's not too late. If I can't get his heart started again, we're going to be in hot water. And if we do get it started but it takes longer than it should and he gets brain damage, how long do you think it'll be before we hear the end if it? Huh? Just let me handle this!"

"Clear" Chase shocked House yet again. Nothing.

"We have to prepare for the worst!" Wilson told him.

"You, too? I can handle it, just let me do this!"

"Clear!" Nothing.

"Damnit! Clear!"

Finally. _Finally,_ House's heartbeat started up. The machine verified it, and so did Cameron when she leaned in again to check for a pulse. Two fingers on the neck under the chin confirmed it.

"It's there, but it's weak. If we don't strengthen it, he'll go into shock again."

"Get a bag of Dopamine in here!" Chase commanded. A nurse came in minutes later with one in hand.

Cameron set up the bag of Dopamine-saline solution with a metered pump. She hooked a catheter to it and threaded the catheter into House's brachial artery, the main artery in the arm. She then set the metered pump to administer the dopamine at an appropriate rate, given the amount of dopamine and House's weight.

It was then that things finally calmed down just a bit. With everyone breathing hard due to complete mental and physical exhaustion, it was all too easy to relax in the visitor's chairs set up in the room.

The nurses left and went back to what they had previously been doing, leaving Cameron, Chase, and Wilson alone with Jared asleep in his bed, and House unconscious in his. After a much needed, but short-lived silence, Wilson spoke up.

"The fact that his heart stopped during shock points to what caused it." he explained "Cardiogenic Shock."

"Cardiogenic..."Cameron's voice trailed off. Chase picked up where she left off.

"Cardiogenic shock. That means..."

"Exactly." Wilson finished, completing the thought "House had a massive heart attack."


	9. Chapter 9

**Teeny bit of Huddy in this chapter, at least on Cuddy's part. A little Hameron, too. Again, on Cameron's part, not House's. **

**Here it is! The big diagnosis! Can you guess what it is before the story ends? There will probably be one more chapter after this one to kind of wrap things up and tie the story together. I hope this was satisfactory! :)  
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**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Nine**

"What!" Cuddy shouted, doing her best to conceal her worry with anger "House had a massive heart attack and no one told me?"

Wilson hanged his head in shame, doing it so as to hide the fact that he was ashamed.

"The disease caused a heart attack, the heart attack cause Cardiogenic Shock. We were so busy trying to keep him alive that it never occurred to us to tell you."

Cuddy stood up from her desk for dramatic effect. She looked Wilson in the eyes, letting him know she was deadly serious.

"He could have died, Wilson! He could have _died__!_" she shouted "Do you have any idea what would have happened to a hospital like this if a doctor as well-known as House had died? House is known as one of the best doctors in the country! People come from all over just to have him take one look at their sicknesses! If he dies it'll be national news! We'll have former patients gathering around this place for weeks with flowers and wreaths and not to mention the news media would have a party covering the story!"

"Oh, Cuddy, you're such a liar!" Wilson shouted back at her, his temper suddenly snapping, completely unlike him "That's not why you're upset we didn't tell you and you know it! You don't care about our reputation, the hospital's reputation, or even your own reputation! You're upset we didn't tell you because you're in love with House! And if he had died and you weren't there to be with him in his last moments you'd never have been able to live with yourself! And you know it, Cuddy!"

"Wilson-"

"You have to choose Cuddy! Do you want Jared or House? Jared's a lot younger than you are, but he's kinder and more understanding. While House is closer to your age, he's also an ass. You can't live without either one of them, and your trying to have the best of both worlds is killing them! You knew the only reason you convinced House to take that case is because you didn't trust anyone else with someone so close to you. And the only reason House agreed is because somewhere, buried under all that garbage he cares about you. You should feel very lucky, Cuddy. House didn't have to take the case. He can't live without you just as much as you can't live without him. He could just as easily have ignored you and let Jared die! Then he'd have no one to compete against for your attention. But he cares enough about you to save him not for his own sake, but for yours. Regardless of what he says, he does care...somewhere. You're a very lucky person, Cuddy. But you're screwing it up. And now, you'd better hope that biopsy sample Foreman's looking at tells us something. Because if not, you're going to lose them both."

And with that, Wilson stormed out of Cuddy's office, leaving her there to stew in the silence. She stood there, suffocating under the weight of it all. Finally, after what seemed like hours, Cuddy slowly sat down behind the desk, still staring at the door Wilson had left from.

"I didn't mean it, House. I wanted to try it out. I thought...maybe since I had so much trouble with guys my own age...I could give the younger ones a try. It was an experiment, House, that's all. But I wasn't ready to give up loving you, so I made a mistake. I tried to keep you both. If I hadn't been so stupid...if my conflicted emotions hadn't made you take the case, you wouldn't be dying, House. I'm sorry. You always called us all idiots. I just proved that just like always, you were right. I am an idiot. And now my idiocy is going to cost you your life. I'm so sorry..." And with that Lisa Cuddy leaned back in her chair so she was looking up at the sky and let the small tears trickle solemnly down her cheek.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Wilson had joined Cameron and Chase in House's differential diagnosis room to help them find out what was wrong with him. He was Wilson's best friend, after all.

"Let me do an X-Ray on House's heart." Cameron said "And let me check Jared's, too. I also want to check both their kidneys. I want to make sure we're dealing with the same creature here. Because if they have two different illnesses we should be focusing on House, too. Not just Jared figuring that once we figure him out we'll have House's diagnosis as well."

"We have to focus on House now, anyway. His is more life-threatening at this point. Jared can survive a little longer with messed up kidneys. You can easily get a transplant for those. If this disease is in House's heart throwing heart attacks around, then we don't have much time to get this diagnosis right."

"Chase is right." Wilson agreed "House's life is in immediate danger, and while Jared's is too, his is not in as much danger as House's. Go do some X-Rays, Cameron. We need to get it right this time. We don't have any more time to be wrong."

"Where's Foreman?" Chase asked as if he was just realizing that his colleague was not in the room with him "First he misses House's near death experience and now he's missing the differential. Whatever's in that sample must be pretty important."

"With any luck he'll come back with an answer." Wilson muttered.

Cameron left the room in the middle of the boys' conversation to do her X-Rays.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Guess what I found." Cameron said as she stormed into the room later. Foreman stormed in at almost the same time, saying the same thing.

"I found something, too." he told them "And you'll never guess what it is."

"What?" Chase asked. Foreman was happy to oblige.

"I tested the sample over and over again. I didn't think it was possible with all the vaccines these days. But I guess anything's possible, no matter how rare..."

"What?" Chase asked again, growing impatient "Can't you just tell us what you found?"

"And to think, it was as easy as Penicillin and Erythromycin..."

"What?" Chase and Cameron both said, almost yelling.

"The biopsy sample revealed traces of Corynebacterium Diphtheriae."

"But there's a vaccine..." Cameron started as her voice trailed off.

"It doesn't matter. We need to get both of them on antibiotics and let them know what it is."

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

House was staring at the ceiling, awake but weak. He had been told he'd had a heart attack and went into Cardiogenic Shock, but he still didn't know what was killing him. He didn't know what caused the heart attack to begin with. Little did he know, he was about to find out.

Foreman, Chase, and Cameron rushed into the room with a sense of accomplishment about them. Foreman was holding some papers, as was Cameron. The group stood between the beds and smiled at Jared and House.

"How are you feeling, House?" Cameron asked, an overwhelming amount of concern in her voice. House rolled his head to the side to look at her.

"Weak. My heart's still trying to get my body healthy. And with the heart attack it's injured, which means it's doing an even poorer job than it was before. This had better be good news. Otherwise get out of my room, I need sleep."

"Of course this is good news. You're gonna be okay, House. And so is Jared." Chase said. House and Jared looked up.

"Really?" House asked "What do we have?"

"You're not going to believe this, because it's so rare in the U.S. now with all the vaccines and required medications, but..." Foreman began until House interrupted him.

"Yeah, yeah, rare diseases are _so_ uncommon with my cases. Just spit it out already."

"You and Jared have Diphtheria. You already know what it is, House, but Jared doesn't so I'm explaining it anyway. Diphtheria is a bacterial infection caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. It's an infection of the throat that's hard to diagnose because in its early stages it just looks like a bad cold. The bacteria release a poison that creates a sludge in the throat that can range anywhere from grey to black in color. It's thick, so if there's enough of it it can block the airways completely and cause respiratory arrest. After that the person experiences slurred speech and blurry vision. Then this is where things got confusing. If diphtheria isn't treated it can spread to other parts of the body. In you, Jared, it spread to your kidneys first, causing kidney failure. In House it spread to his heart first, causing a heart attack which in turn caused Cardiogenic Shock. The biopsy we did on your kidneys revealed the bacterium. We'll give you both Penicillin and Erythromycin to kill off the bacteria. It's hard to believe it was all that simple and we never caught it..."

"Oh, thank God..." Jared mumbled "I never wanted to leave Cuddy all alone by herself..."

At the mention of Jared and Cuddy together House all but lost his mind. He got up out of the gurney and went for his cane. His heart was still damaged and trying to heal itself, therefore House's body was still weak. This gave Cameron the unfair advantage of being able to snatch House's cane before he was able to get to it. She held it behind her back and slowly backed up as House inched forward toward her, gripping his leg and limping heavily.

"Give me my cane." he demanded. Cameron looked him straight in the eye. It was the only way of talking to House; he had ways of breaking you without saying a word.

"No. You're heart's still in bad shape. You had a massive heart attack, House! Get back in bed!"

"You can't tell me what to do." By now he was right up against her, staring her down. She looked up at his face, never breaking eye contact.

"I can if it's what's best for your health." She did her best to hide her fear. House was not only intimidating, he also wasn't above hurting someone else. There have been numerous occasions when House had punched or otherwise hurt someone else because he was either in a bad mood or pretty ticked at them for one reason or another. It didn't matter if the person in question was a complete stranger or even Wilson. That was a frightening thought. And to top it all off House was almost twice her size.

"Get out of my face."

"No." Foreman and Chase watched the spectacle with wide eyes and mouths almost hanging open. They knew Cameron's feelings for House, they knew House's temper, and they knew the tension the two of them created by the sheer force of Cameron's affection and House's indifference to it, yet they were surprised when they saw House staring her down- over what?

"It's Cuddy." Foreman finally said.

"What?" Chase asked, astonished his colleague was reading his thoughts.

"Jared mentioned loving Cuddy. Deep down House has some sort of affection for Cuddy, and you know House. He can't take it when someone else has something he thinks he needs. It set something off deep inside him. That's why he's so desperate to get his cane off of Cameron. He's going to beat all the love for Cuddy out of Jared. Cameron won't give him his cane because she knows that's what he's going to do."

"So in other words, House gets his cane off of Cameron, he's going to end up in prison for murder, or at the very least assult?"

"Yep."

At Cameron's no House lost it. He lunged at her, his arms trying to get around to her back. She reacted quickly, though, and was able to grab onto his hands as he made the attempt. They stood there for a couple more seconds, grappling each other, hands pressed together in a sort of wrestling match. Cameron knew the only reason she had any chance at all right now was because House's body was weak. His heart was weak.

"House, stop this! You're being a child! Just get back in bed! Do you really think Cuddy's going to love you if you just get rid of everything keeping her from loving anyone else?"

It was almost like that very sentence cause an aneurism to burst in House's brain. It was just enough to get his anger and heart rate high enough to go just a little bit over the edge. It was just enough over the edge to cause House to pass out right where he stood.


	10. Chapter 10

**The last chapter is here! I'm actually really upset it's over, but I guess it means I can start formulating something new. Possibly some other way to torture House, I really should get my brain checked out; I have way too much fun torturing characters...ANYway, I'm ranting. I hope you guys like the story :)**

****Btw, I put a lot of House/Cuddy in this chapter. There originally wasn't supposed to be any House/Cuddy in the story, but I guess that's what the story wanted so that's what it got. Maybe I got a little carried away, I don't know. Anyway, enjoy the ending. ****

**The Common Cold**

**Chapter Ten**

Dr. Gregory House and Dr. James Wilson stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. The pair walked down the busy hallways as if nothing was going on around them. Actually House was acting as if nothing was going on around him. Wilson, on the other hand, was looking around wondering for the umpteenth time why House wasn't doing his job and caring for the sick people that were almost overrunning the place. Maybe it wouldn't be so busy around Princeton-Plainsboro if House actually buckled himself down and did his job.

"Any symptoms?" Wilson asked his best friend, trying to sound casual "I mean, since the treatment started?"

"Nope. I'm clean, boss, I promise." he answered with a mock 'yes sir' tone to his voice.

"You know, it is possible for a person to ask about another's health for the sheer purpose of making sure they're okay. Everyone doesn't have to care because they're craving a mystery."

"Yes, mom."

Wilson sighed just as they reached the lobby of the hospital and ran into Cuddy and Jared. The couple was standing facing each other near the glass double doors. They were talking in low voices, like a couple of parents who were discussing something complicated around a young, overly emotional child.

"Lisa, I can't. I'm sorry."

"Jared, what's wrong? You had no qualms about dating me before you got sick. Did the diphtheria do something to your brain? Do you need someone to do a CT scan?"Cuddy was grasping at straws; she could feel it in the sound of her own voice.

"You know the reason for this isn't the diphtheria. I just don't think this age difference will work out."

"You never had any problem with it before!" Cuddy hissed in a sort of screaming whisper.

"Listen, you really think the nurses don't talk? That the diagnostic team you've got doesn't talk? I kow about you and Dr. House." Cuddy's face twisted into a shocked expression. She wasn't sleeping with House, and the hospital knew it, right?

"Jared, I'm dating you, not House!"

"Maybe not, but you should be. Your staff talks, Lisa. You light up like a Christmas tree when House is around. You thrive off of conflict with him. I even heard that he only took my case because of you. I don't know if it's your doing or his doing or what history you two have, but you can't deny it. You love House. I'm sorry, Lisa. This isn't going to work out. We're through."

And with that Jared turned and walked out the door in the lobby and right out into the parking lot, leaving Cuddy standing there wondering if she was dreaming.

House and Wilson stood there, watching the whole episode. They could hear the conversation despite the fact that Cuddy and Jared had been whispering. Wilson looked at House as House stared straight at Cuddy's lonely, depressed figure. Wilson scrunched his eyebrows a bit and opened his mouth, hesitating for a few moments to speak.

"Are you...thinking about talking to her?" he asked, surprised House would even consider trying to make someone feel better. House turned to look at Wilson, stared for a couple seconds, and turned back to Cuddy.

"No, no. I just zoned out for a bit. You know, too many pain pills can do that to a person." Wilson sighed.

"Fine. Don't talk to her if you want. But I think it would help if-"

"No one cares what you think." Wilson nodded and returned to his office to get his things to go home for the day. All through the walk down, he tried to convince himself not to care whether or not House would comfort the woman he had feelings for. But in actuality, Wilson cared about House. House was his best friend and he cared whether or not his best friend did something to make him happy; to make him sane. He cared that House's heart was breaking before his eyes and damnit, he was going to do something about it. Wilson turned and marched straight back to the lobby.

House was still staring at Cuddy when Wilson got back, it had only been a few minutes, after all. Go to her? Why should she care? She never _would _care, that was the thing. He was a lonely, misanthropic bastard who never acted like he'd cared for anyone besides himself. Cuddy had no reason to care. And yet, he couldn't stand to see her like this; crushed, falling apart, almost as lonely as he was. It wasn't right. It was horribly wrong and he needed to do something about it. Wilson was right. Wilson was...

"House."

He stood there staring, not bothering to look his best friend in the eyes.

"You bastard."

"Yes, we've established that I'm a horrible person, can we get to the interesting part of this conversation?"

"You wanted to die. You weren't just okay with the possibility of the Diphtheria killing you, _hoped_ the Diphtheria would kill you. You won't talk to Cuddy because you didn't plan this far ahead. You weren't planning on surviving. You wanted to die to make her miserable, to make her regret not loving you. She told me everything that went on when you two talked alone when you first suspected that you were sick. That's why you tried to make her guilty." Wilson's voice rose with every syllable he spoke. Why was he even friends with someone this backwards? Someone with as few morals as House? He lowered his voice down to a deadly serious whisper.

"You bastard. You sick, manipulating bastard."

House lost it. He couldn't control his emotions anymore. Wilson had finally crossed over the line.

"YES! I'm a HORRIBLE person for caring about her mental safety! Did you ever consider that the reason I said the things I said to her was because I didn't want her to become like me? Lonely and friendless? That I didn't want her to destroy her life over something as meaningless as a relationship?" House couldn't help himself. He just broke down. Cane hitting the tile floor with a sickening clang, House fell to his knees, then screamed at the pain in his right leg. The sudden physical pain combined with the biting, stinging emotional pain in his ever lonely heart proved too much. For the first time in literally years, Gregory House cried. He didn't just let a few tears loose, his body wrenched with sobs. He couldn't do it anymore, he just couldn't. The tears poured down his face, so much so that the salt in them actually irritated his skin.

He stared up at Wilson with the most painful, emotional expression anyone had seen on House's face since before the infarction.

"Wilson, I never wanted to die to get back at Cuddy. I wanted to die because I knew that I couldn't live without her."

It was then that Wilson noticed that Cuddy had overheard House's breakdown and walked over to see what was going on. She stared at the man, fully displayed in total weakness, total vulnerability. This was Gregory House. Not the annoying-to-the-point-of-nauseating jerk everyone knew. This was the Gregory House that he kept inside. This was all of the emotion that made him human. This was what made him, him. This was the man she loved.

"House, what's wrong with you? You hate suicide!" she said, nearly to the point of crying herself. He turned sadly to look at her and replied in a depressed voice.

"It's not suicide if it's not your doing, and it's out of your control."

"House, what do you want me to tell you?" Cuddy asked desperately, yet softly "What do you want me to say?" She got down on the ground with him so she was eye level.

"I want you to tell me I'm not feeling like this for nothing."

"Oh, House, I can't. I'm so sorry." She got up, and walked away.

Cuddy felt guilty as she walked out the door and through the parking lot to her car. She loved House, why did she act like that? She probably just crushed his spirit. But that was the way life was sometimes. It was kill or be killed. Only the strong survive. If she had given in to House's feelings she would be miserable. It was one or the other, there was no way to have both of them be happy. If they were apart House was unhappy, if they were together she was unhappy.

She felt a horrible heartwrenching guilt envelope her chest as she wearily climbed into her car. House was a sweet man inside, she knew. And the fact that he could never get over his stupid ego to have a real relationship just killed her inside. It really did.

Cuddy started her car, looked up to the ceiling and screamed.

"I'm sorry, House! You brought this on yourself! Why did you get me caught up in it? Why, you stupid jerk?"

She may have said it, but she didn't believe it.

So there he was. Gregory House. On his knees. Turned down by the woman he loved. It was the peak of humiliating; it was the peak of despairing. Here he was at his most vulnerable point. And she denied him. She denied all that he was. She denied him in his faults, in his triumphs, in his fears. She denied every part of him. And that, he just couldn't take.

Then he got up from the floor.

Wilson saw the look on House's face. He saw the pain and agony, more than any leg infarction could cause. For a moment, House looked...

"House, what are you thinking? House, what's going on in there? House? House!"

He screamed desperately to his closest friend but to no avail. House was in his own world. Maybe he had finally snapped. Maybe this was it. He wasn't going to let it be it.

Wilson jumped to grab House as he began to hobble away on his cane. House retaliated, smacking Wilson in the side with his cane, knocking the breath out of him. Doubled over for a second, Wilson watched his friend leave the hospital, slower than ever.

He followed House outside into the parking lot, where he noticed Cuddy's car gone. She had left. It was over.

House walked to her empty reserved space. It started to rain. He stood staring at the ground, then he released the grip in his right hand, letting his cane fall into the space, directly in the middle. House walked away, painfully and without anything to support his bad leg. He didn't even limp, he forced himself to endure the pain enough to completely hide any trace of injury.

House didn't even go to his car. He just walked the so many miles back to his apartment.

Wilson let him go.

THE END

**Whelp, there we are. I might be writing a sequel to this, I haven't decided yet. Hope this story was awesome, and don't forget to review! :)**


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